What model Mac Pro to equal i7 iMac Speed?

DoFoT9 said:

hmm. what about when multi-tasking using all 8 threads and large chunks of RAM, would DMI bandwidth be pushed then?

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Anandtech said:

Intel told me something interesting when I was out in LA earlier this summer: it takes at least 3 cores to fully saturate Lynnfield's dual-channel DDR3-1333 memory bus. That's three cores all working on memory bandwidth intensive threads at the same time. That's a pretty stiff requirement. In the vast, vast majority of situations Lynnfield's dual channel DDR3 memory controller won't hurt it.

Move up to 6 or 8 core designs and a third memory channel is necessary, and that's why we'll see those processors debut exclusively on LGA-1366 platforms. In fact, X58 motherboards will only need a BIOS update to work with

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Eidorian said:

Bloomfield and Lynnfield have integrated memory controllers. QPI and DMI are used to connect the processor to the peripheral buses. Lynnfield has an onboard PCIe 2.0 x16 controller as well while Bloomfield connects to the X58 chipset over its QPI connection. X58 is going to have 36 PCIe 2.0 lanes along with its DMI connect to the ICH10R southbridge.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3634

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And if you're specifically interested in the memory bandwidth...

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3634&p=7

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